


paperplane

by NingenShikkaku



Category: Kamen Rider W (Double)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NingenShikkaku/pseuds/NingenShikkaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s all about those dying breaths and the way Hidari’s eyes fog over like winter frost as the chills creeps into his skin; his bones; his heart.</p><p>(Or, the take where Extreme Memory failed to save Shoutarou.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	paperplane

**Author's Note:**

> What-if story where Extreme arrives too late to block Energy's attack. AU of Last Episode.  
> Slight crossover with Kiva.

In retrospect, Ryuu still remembers whispering Hidari’s name in horror as the fellow detective falls to his knees. The girls and the kid are screaming, calling for Hidari to _wake up_ and _open your eyes, dammit!_

Surely this is a dream, Ryuu thinks, because _Philip_ is right there, also shouting for Hidari. This is just a dream, and there is no hole burning through Hidari’s vest and shirt.

The dopant’s self-satisfied cackles wake Ryuu up better than his internal alarm, though.

Ryuu barely remembers killing the memory-user, blade dripping crimson as red as his own jacket.

 

☂

 

“There will be side-effects,” Hidari explains. “I’m still dying, Terui, just in a slower pace.”

“Why tell me?” Ryuu stares, feeling empty in the inside. “Why only me; not Akiko or… hell, Philip?”

Hidari nods. “I will, but later. I’m not ready just yet.”

His lips are dry when he asks, “How long?”

“Who knows?” A careless shrug. “Could be a couple of years, a couple of months.”

For a second, Ryuu feels as if there’s hand choking his windpipe, fingers gripping tight. He swallows.

“Hidari. _Hidari_.”

“…I can count on you, right?”

Hidari is smiling, smiling, smiling.

Ryuu nods.

(S _o he drowns._ )

 

☂

 

Months pass. Winter comes with flurry of snow and cold breeze.

Hidari grows paler.

“It’s the cold,” Hidari says if Akiko asks.

Ryuu notices the capsules; a small container hidden deep in one of Hidari’s pockets. Hidari takes one after he transformed.

“A supplement,” Hidari tells him when Ryuu dares to ask. “Another rider, one from Tokyo, made them for me. I heard his company personally researched something other than human.”

“It isn’t dangerous?”

Hidari shrugs. “They keep me alive.”

But Ryuu isn’t convinced, so he seeks out said rider with his police connection. Three weeks later he makes a visit to Development & Pioneer. Nobori Taiga is a man with the bearing of a king and a cool gaze far older, far wiser than he looks.

“The capsules are first-aid rather than true cure,” Nobori says frankly, light tone belying seriousness underneath. “We do have several cases of energy-drain, something to be expected with fangire kids learning their limits. Hidari’s case is unique.”

“So you’re basically out of ideas?”

Nobori visibly hesitates, and replies, “We know next to nothing about this specific dopant. This far, nobody survived the attack except Hidari. If we could, say, study the dopant as well…”

Nobori lets his sentence to trail off, whatever being done in a ‘study’ remains only implied, but Ryuu only thinks, _Oh, so I shouldn’t kill_ it _so easily_.

 

☂

 

“Hey, Terui, do you know why the sky is blue?” Hidari asks.

There isn’t anybody but them in the riverbanks, and the empty surroundings lend a strange sense of quiet.

“…That sounds really strange coming from you,” Ryuu manages to say.

Hidari laughs, soft, soft. “Philip told me why. He said it’s because the effect of Rayleigh scattering or something. I don’t remember the details.”

“Sounds like Philip all right.”

There’s a paper plane on Hidari’s hand, and when did he manage to fold it, Ryuu doesn’t know. It sails away from Hidari’s hand for a good few seconds before ending up falling down into the river, where the stream swallows it.

“Ah,” Hidari exclaims.

Somehow, watching paper plane sink with withered wings just makes Ryuu extremely, inexplicably sad.

 

☂

 

Hidari collapses after a particularly tough battle, and Ryuu spends hours to convince Philip and Akiko that it’s just battle fatigue, nothing more, nothing serious. He briefly wonders if he’s also convincing himself, who he’s been lying to.

But Hidari looks thin and pale and so terribly, terribly beautiful in his frailty.

 

☂

 

They’re using FangJoker more often, now.

Ryuu watches when Hidari argues Philip out of killing a memory-user after the dopant managed to land an attack that injures Hidari’s vacant body.

“It’s okay, dammit. I’ll heal in no time. A life is important, even enemy’s life. You don’t kill anybody that carelessly. We’re kamen rider, the protector. We don’t kill.”

“Terui Ryuu did.”

Hidari’s voice is frighteningly empty. “…What?”

“Terui Ryuu killed Energy.”

When Ryuu enters the agency late at night, Philip fast asleep in the garage and Akiko safe at home, Hidari’s face is drawn to a frown.

“I thought you only did memory break,” Hidari says, clearly disapproving.

So Ryuu sighs. “…I guess I lost myself for a moment.”

Hidari’s frown softens. “…Don’t ever let Philip to do the same. It’s not worth it.”

 _“I’m not worth it,”_ remains unspoken, but Ryuu understands it nonetheless.

 

☂

 

Season is autumn once more, and Ryuu is sorry, so sorry, Akiko, but he’s in love with Hidari the way a moth loves the flame.

Hopelessly, irrevocably, painfully.

 

☂

 

( _“You’ll be okay,” Hidari says. “You will.”_

_“This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it was.”_

_“Life goes on, Terui. Just remember the happy times. Do it for me, okay?”_

_“...”_

_“You’ll be okay. I know you will.”_ )

 

☂

 

So the point is, Hidari dies on a Thursday, and it’s the same old Thursday to everyone else walking around from home to school to work to bars and—it’s—not. Not like that, for him.

Ryuu remembers how it happens. It’s all about those dying breaths and the way Hidari’s eyes fog over like winter frost as the chills creeps into his skin; his bones; his heart.

 

☂

 

( _Life is surprisingly frail, isn’t it?_ )

 

☂

 

Akiko is with him to bury the ashes.

 

☂

 

Ryuu stops wearing red leather. Instead he wears sensible suits and vests and trousers, dark and serious and something Hidari would wear. Hidari’s hat, the one he wore when they first met, is in his closet (Narumi Soukichi’s being put into Hidari’s coffin, the others in Philip’s possession).

He goes to work, transform when needed (he’s the only active rider now), living his life. Sometimes he goes to the agency, braving his own ghosts and Philip’s cold, blank gaze underneath the rim of whichever one of Hidari’s hat the boy chooses to wear, Akiko’s presence barely reaching to their shoulder, and forcing Philip to relearn how to live.

 

☂

 

In the end, nothing really happens between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment on your way out...


End file.
